Bushes place intimacy above catering to D.C. high society

September 07, 2001|By Michael Kilian, Washington Bureau.

WASHINGTON — The first White House state dinner hosted by President and Mrs. George W. Bush passed into history Wednesday night hailed as a great success, in large part because they kept the guest list small, limited the opportunities for gaffes and restricted exposure to the news media to a carefully calculated minimum.

"It's a definite change going from those huge Clinton affairs to this smaller, intimate but elegant kind of dinner," said Heather Freeman, a veteran Washington party-giver. "The Bushes' first state dinner is the reopening of the social season here, and it will set the tone that smaller is better, and more elegant. I think Washingtonians are tired of big parties, especially in these economic times."

State dinners in the Clinton administration became jam-packed, sometimes rowdy affairs so huge they had to be held in a gigantic, circus-style tent on the White House South Lawn. Perhaps mindful of the goodwill generated by a White House invitation, the Clintons had more than 700 guests to their last state dinner, a September 2000 affair for Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

The limelight-loving Clintons allowed live C-Span coverage of the receiving line, where numerous guests received not only handshakes but hugs and kisses from President Bill Clinton. First Lady Laura Bush put an end to televising that portion of the evening.

She invited only 134 guests to the Bushes' glittering gathering for Mexican President Vicente Fox and his wife, Martha Sahagun de Fox. That is the maximum that can be comfortably seated in the State Dining Room created by President Theodore Roosevelt for such events nearly a century ago.

An intimate gathering

"We wanted the first dinner, which is very important for us--a special, almost I'd say very sentimental dinner for us--to be just right," Laura Bush told reporters during a preview of preparations Wednesday afternoon.

She said that rather than inviting hordes of Washington VIPs, she and her staff wanted to build the dinner around the guests of honor, inviting mostly people with some kind of association with Mexico and making it convivial by confining it to the State Dining Room.

"So we had to get it down to 136," she said of the guest list, including the Bushes.

But that break from past practice earned the Bush White House few friends among the multitude of presumed worthies who didn't get to attend Washington's premier social event. Or among those in the neighborhood startled from their slumbers and television sets by a Bush innovation: after-dinner fireworks that the White House didn't announce for fear of attracting crowds. The noise could be heard as far away as Alexandria, Va.

"They were obviously very, very nervous and very, very careful and didn't want anything to go wrong," said Ann Stock, social secretary in the Clinton White House, who like many others in Washington watched portions of the event on television. "But I thought it was a lovely evening."

The Clintons, the Reagans and even the previous Bushes liked to populate their official banquets with show business celebrities. Those present at Clinton's last one included actress Goldie Hawn, comedian Chevy Chase, model Christie Brinkley, singer Melissa Etheridge and comedian Al Franken.

The news media also had been generously favored with personal invitations to state dinners in previous administrations. Clinton, for example, had 18 media people as guests at his last state dinner. The Bushes invited only Brit Hume, managing editor of the Fox News Network, and NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, who came as the spouse of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Swain also noted there were only four corporate CEOs and no one from the Washington social establishment.

"Sally Quinn and the Georgetown people weren't there," she said, referring to the Washington Post writer, a social fixture in the capital. "It was heavy on Texas."

"When you consider that 50 or more of the guests are government officials who have to be invited, a lot of people are going to be left off," Stock said. "But you'll see some of them showing up at the second state dinner and more at the third."

Instead of having the two presidents descend the White House grand staircase together, with their spouses following, the four came down as couples.

"Holding hands," Stock said. "I loved that."

Other new touches included a televised prayer after the toasts, and dinner menus printed in two languages.

However decorous, this first George and Laura Bush dinner was very welcome.

"Washingtonians are breathing a sigh of relief that lights are on and people are smiling and mingling again in the White House," said Freeman. "It seems there has been a void in entertaining since the Clintons departed."